1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to an electronic musical instrument having an automatic accompaniment capability and an effect application capability.
2. Description of Related Art
An electronic musical instrument is configured to execute an automatic accompaniment. The electronic musical instrument can change a style of the currently executed automatic accompaniment to another style. In one change mode, when control information for instructing change of the automatic accompaniment style is reproduced from a storage device during automatic play, the change is executed according to this control information. In another change mode, when the user instructs a style change by predetermined switch operation, a specified new is effected at an end bar of the current measure immediately after the instruction. Sometimes, it is required, in an electronic musical instrument of the above-mentioned type, to change an acoustic effect applied to music tones of the automatic accompaniment to another acoustic effect when a style change operation is conducted. In such a situation, an effect change operation is executed in coincidence with the style change operation.
However, the above-mentioned conventional electronic musical instrument may involve a drawback such as noise generation due to effect change operation when the same is executed during automatic accompaniment. To avoid this drawback, the effect change operation is executed according to steps shown in FIG. 5. To be specific, an effect currently applied is faded out, and then a work memory (RAM) used for effect application is cleared. Next, fade-in is executed to gradually start application of a new effect. These steps inevitably take about 200 ms for the effect change operation to be completed. Consequently, in the above-mentioned conventional electronic musical instrument, when the style change is actually made from an old style to a new style together with the effect change to be made accompanying the style change, it takes time for a new effect to be applied to music tones. This may cause a problem that the new effect is not applied to the first music tone after the style change. For example, when executing effect change operation such that a chorus effect is selected as the style change is made, the chorus effect may not be applied to the first music tone following that style change. This lack of the chorus effect from the first music tone gives the listener the impression that something is out of place. This impression is especially emphasized when an acoustic effect to a percussion instrument tone has been changed.